Existing computer systems typically employ a variety of security-related functions for protection against potentially harmful user activity. For example, user authentication is often employed which requires a user to provide a password or other credentials which establishes the user's identity and protects against the possibility of an intruder or fraudster masquerading as an authorized user and engaging in harmful activity. Another type of function, referred to as access control, enforces limitations on the activities that authorized users can engage in. In one common example, access controls may be placed on certain storage devices or file system directories so that only certain users are permitted to access the data therein. Such access controls can serve to protect sensitive data from being accidentally deleted or used for an improper purpose by a user who has no legitimate need for access to the data. One dimension of access control may regard a type of user. Users can include typical or “non-privileged” users and “privileged” users who engage in more sensitive operations. Privileged users, who are normally selected in part based on perceived trustworthiness, are by definition granted greater access to system operational functions than is granted to non-privileged users.
Existing security functions may not always provide adequate protection against certain types of harmful activity. For example, the password of a user may be compromised enabling an intruder or fraudster to engage in harmful activities. In a further example, a privileged user can engage in harmful and unethical activities such as downloading sensitive information for their own benefit. It will be appreciated that such activities could cause tremendous problems and incur substantial cost to an organization.
It will also be known by those skilled in the art that so-called phishing attacks are also a substantial threat. A phishing attack usually involves an attacker or fraudster fooling the user to exchange secret data such as the log-on details. The attacker, a man-in-the-middle, uses the transmitted authentication data thereafter or simultaneously to affect a log-on procedure under the identity of the attacked authorized user and misuse the user's rights.
Organizations involved in software development may employ a source code control (SCC) system for managing source code assets produced by software developers. SCC systems provide numerous benefits to these organizations, including serving as a central source code repository for storing source code assets, retaining historical information about how source code assets have evolved over time, providing access to historical versions of the source code assets, and providing a mechanism for developers to share source code with team members.
The Bluetooth standard has been introduced to provide low-cost, short-range wireless communication between mobile devices such as a portable PC (Personal Computer) and a mobile phone. The Bluetooth standard enables wireless voice/data communication between various digital devices, using a radio frequency. For example, a mobile phone and a notebook computer (a portable PC), when employing the Bluetooth technology, can be wirelessly connected to each other without using a cable. The Bluetooth technology is applicable to all kinds of digital devices, including a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a desktop computer, a FAX (facsimile), a keyboard and a joystick.
The Bluetooth system supports point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections. Devices sharing one channel should also share a channel capacity, and a set of these devices is called a “piconet”. That is, the piconet is defined as a set of devices connected to one another through a Bluetooth ad-hoc network. In general, one piconet includes 7 devices: one of the 7 devices serves as a master for performing piconet management operations such as the generation of a frequency hopping pattern, while the remaining devices serve as slaves.
Recent advances in speech recognition (SR) technology and increases in hardware capabilities have made speech recognition based user interfaces for desktop and mobile systems commercially viable. SR technology takes spoken words and translates them into a format, which can easily be manipulated and displayed by digital systems.
Speech recognition software is currently available (e.g. NATURALLY SPEAKING from Dragon System, Inc., PLAINTALK from Apple Computer, VIA VOICE from IBM and FREESPEECH from Philips Talk).
Mobile devices can interact with digital computer networks to utilize speech recognition services in conjunction with the standard mobile device user interface (e.g. a phone keypad). A wireless communication system utilizes a remote speech recognition server system to translate voice input received from mobile devices into a mobile-suitable form that can be processed by the mobile devices. The translation process begins by establishing a voice communication channel between a mobile device and the speech recognition server. A user of the mobile device then begins speaking in a fashion that may be detected by the speech recognition server system. Upon detecting the user's speech, the speech recognition server system translates the speech into the mobile-suitable form, which is then sent to the user through a separate data communication channel.
Multimodal applications can accept multiple types, or modes, of input. For example, a multimodal application can accept input from users such as typed commands and mouse clicks; however the multimodal application also can accept other forms of input such as voice input. Voice recognition systems can interpret the voice input using a grammar that includes a particular vocabulary.
There is a need for computer systems to have further security-related functions for protection against potentially harmful activity.